CHAPTER LXIII. THE CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER.
When the rest of the party had left the dinner-room, and Augustus Bramleigh and Mr. Sedley found themselves alone, a silence of several minutes ensued; a very solemn pause each felt it, well knowing that at such a moment the slightest word may be the signal for disclosures which involve a destiny. Up to this, nothing had been said on either side of “the cause;” and though Sedley had travelled across Europe to speak of it, he waited with decorous reserve till his host should invite him to the topic.
Bramleigh, an awkward and timid man at the best of times, was still more so when he found himself in a situation in which he should give the initiative. As the entertainer of a guest, too, he fancied that to introduce his personal interests as matter of conversation would be in bad taste, and so he fidgeted, and passed the decanters across the table with a nervous impatience, trying to seem at his ease, and stammering out at last some unmeaning question about the other's journey.
Sedley replied to the inquiry with a cold and measured politeness, as a man might to a matter purely irrelevant.
“The Continent is comparatively new ground to you, Mr. Sedley?”
“Entirely so. I have never been beyond Brussels before this.”
“Late years have nearly effaced national peculiarities. One crosses frontiers now, and never remembers a change of country.”
“Quite so.”
“The money, the coinage, perhaps, is the great reminder after all.”
“Money is the great reminder of almost everything, everywhere, sir,” said Sedley, with a stern and decisive tone.
“I am afraid you are right,” said Bramleigh, with a faint sigh; and now they seemed to stand on the brink of a precipice, and look over.
“What news have you for me?” said he at last, gulping as he spoke.
“None to cheer, nothing to give encouragement. The discovery at Castello will insure them a verdict. We cannot dispute the marriage; it was solemnized in all form and duly witnessed. The birth of the child was also carefully authenticated—there is n't a flaw in the registry, and they 'll take care to remind us on the second trial of how freely we scattered our contemptuous sarcasms on the illegitimacy of this connection on the first record.”
“Is the case hopeless, then?”
“Nothing is hopeless where a jury enters, but it is only short of hopeless. Kelson of course says he is sure, and perhaps so should I, in his place. Still they might disagree again: there's a strong repugnance felt by juries against dispossessing an old occupant. All can feel the hardship of his case, and the sympathy for him goes a great way.”
“Still this would only serve to protract matters—they 'd bring another action.”
“Of course they would, and Kelson has money!”
“I declare I see no benefit in continuing a hopeless contest.”
“Don't be hopeless then, that's the remedy.”
Bramleigh made a slight gesture of impatience, and slight as it was, Sedley observed it.
“You have never treated this case as your father would have done, Mr. Bramleigh. He had a rare spirit to face a contest. I remember one day hinting to him that if this claim could be backed by money it would be a very formidable suit, and his answer was:—'When I strike my flag, Sedley, the enemy will find the prize was scarcely worth fighting for.' I knew what he meant was, he 'd have mortgaged the estate to every shilling of its value, before there arose a question of his title.”
“I don't believe it, sir; I tell you to your face I don't believe it,” cried Bramleigh, passionately. “My father was a man of honor, and never would have descended to such duplicity.”
“My dear sir, I have not come twelve hundred miles to discuss a question in ethics, nor will I risk myself in a discussion with you. I repeat, sir, that had your father lived to meet this contention, we should not have found ourselves where we are to-day. Your father was a man of considerable capacity, Mr. Bramleigh. He conducted a large and important house with consummate skill; brought up his family handsomely; and had he been spared, would have seen every one of them in positions of honor and consequence.”
“To every word in his praise I subscribe heartily and gratefully;” and there was a tremor in his voice as Bramleigh spoke.
“He has been spared a sad spectacle, I must say,” continued Sedley. “With the exception of your sister who married that Viscount, ruin—there's only one word for it—ruin has fallen upon you all.”
“Will you forgive me if I remind you that you are my lawyer, Mr. Sedley, not my chaplain nor my confessor?”
“Lawyer without a suit! Why, my dear sir, there will be soon nothing to litigate. You and all belonging to you were an imposition and a fraud. There, there! It's nothing to grow angry over; how could you or any of you suspect your father's legitimacy? You accepted the situation as you found it, as all of us do. That you regarded Pracontal as a cheat was no fault of yours,—he says so himself. I have seen him and talked with him; he was at Kelson's when I called last week, and old Kelson said,—'My client is in the next room: he says you treated him rudely one day he went to your office. I wish you 'd step in and say a civil word or two. It would do good, Sedley. I tell you it would do good!' and he laid such a significant stress on the word, that I walked straight in and said how very sorry I felt for having expressed myself in a way that could offend him. 'At all events, sir,' said I, 'if you will not accept my apology for myself, let me beseech you to separate the interest of my client from my rudeness, and let not Mr. Bramleigh be prejudiced because his lawyer was ill-mannered.' 'It's all forgotten, never to be recalled,' said he, shaking my hand. 'Has Kelson told you my intentions towards Bramleigh?'”
“'He has told me nothing,' said I.”
“'Tell him, Kelson. I can't make the matter plain as you can. Tell Mr. Sedley what we were thinking of.'”
“In one word, sir, his plan was a partition of the property. He would neither disturb your title nor dispute your name. You should be the Bramleighs of Castello, merely paying him a rent-charge of four thousand a year. Kelson suggested more, but he said a hundred thousand francs was ample, and he made no scruple of adding that he never was master of as many sous in his life.”
“'And what does Kelson say to this?' asked I.”
“'Kelson says what Sedley would say—that it is a piece of Quixotism worthy of Hanwell.'”
“'Ma foi,' said Pracontal, it is not the first time I have fired in the air.'”
“We talked for two hours over the matter. Part of what Pracontal said was good sound sense, well reasoned and acutely expressed; part was sentimental rubbish, not fit to listen to. At last I obtained leave to submit the whole affair to you, not by letter—that they would n't have—but personally, and there, in one word, is the reason of my journey.
“Before I left town, however, I saw the Attorney-General, whose opinion I had already taken on certain points of the case. He was a personal friend of your father, and willingly entered upon it. When I told him Pracontal's proposal, he smiled dubiously, and said, 'Why, it's a confession of defeat; the man must know his case will break down, or he never would offer such conditions.'
“I tried to persuade him that without knowing, seeing, hearing this Frenchman, it would not be easy to imagine such an action proceeding from a sane man, but that his exalted style of talk and his inflated sentimentality made the thing credible. He wants to belong to a family, to be owned and accepted as some one's relative. The man is dying of the shame of his isolation.
“'Let him marry.'”
“'So he means, and I hear to Bramleigh's widow, Lady Augusta.'”
“He laughed heartily at this and said, 'It's the only encumbrance on the property.' And now, Mr. Bramleigh, you are to judge, if you can; is this the offer of generosity, or is it the crafty proposal of a beaten adversary? I don't mean to say it is an easy point to decide on, or that a man can hit it off at once. Consult those about you; take into consideration the situation you stand in and all its dangers; bethink you what an adverse verdict may bring if we push them to a trial; and even if the proposal be, as Mr. Attorney thinks, the cry of weakness, is it wise to disregard it?”
“Would you have laid such a proposal before my father, Sedley?” said Bramleigh, with a scarcely perceptible smile.
“Not for five hundred pounds, sir.”
“I thought not.”
“Ay, but remember your father would never have landed us where we stand now, Mr. Bramleigh.”
Augustus winced under this remark, but said nothing.
“If the case be what you think it, Sedley,” said he at last, “this is a noble offer.”
“So say I.”
“There is much to think over in it. If I stood alone here, and if my own were the only interests involved, I think—that is, I hope—I know what answer I should give; but there are others. You have seen my sister: you thought she looked thin and delicate—and she may well do so, her cares overtax her strength; and my poor brother, too, that fine-hearted fellow, what is to become of him? And yet, Sedley,” cried he suddenly, “if either of them were to suspect that this—this—what shall I call it?—this arrangement—stood on no basis of right, but was simply an act of generous forbearance, I 'd stake my life on it, they 'd refuse it.”
“You must not consult them, then, that's clear.”
“But I will not decide till I do so.”
“Oh, for five minutes—only five minutes—of your poor father's strong sense and sound intellect, and I might send off my telegram to-night!” And with this speech, delivered slowly and determinately, the old man arose, took his bedroom candle, and walked away.